Mandolin tablatures for Big Rock Candy Mountain
Norman Blake
Recomended level: Beginner
This old song, written by Harry McClintock, has its instrumental version recorded by Norman Blake. It was featured on the popular O Brother Where Art Thou movie soundtrack. It is a nice mid-tempo song with an interesting melody, playful chord progression and unusual number of bars. Keep in mind that the shuffle rhythm (dom di-di, dom di-di) is one of the key elements of many tunes - including this one. You can help keep the groove going in your soloing by putting dynamic emphasis on the off-beats (dom DI-di, dom DI-di - i.e. where you normally play chops when playing rhythm). The arrangement of the advanced solo uses a lot of 16th-notes with double stops. For the most part, it stays very close to the melody. However, there are a few spots that help to spice the solo up - like the slides in bars 3, 7, and 9. The triplet in bar 9 is played by two subsequent hammer-ons. Be careful not to speed up here. Use the metronome of the Tunefox player while practicing along at a slow tempo.
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Intermediate
- Difficulty
- Key C
- Tempo 90 bpm
- Tuning GDAE
Compare this arrangement with the beginner version and search for the general techniques that can add the bluegrass flavour to your playing, i.e. using shuffle rhythm (e.g. bar 2), d...
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